Mangaluru, August 28: There are people who lead their lives by plucking coconuts from the trees, peeling off its shell, etc. But, you can’t believe! There are some people who don’t have to climb the trees for plucking them or peel off its shell and they are doing enough business with coconuts. They are capturing coconuts that are floating in the river during rainy season and lead their life through this.

In the coastal area, there are enough coconut trees. It is not easy to climb the coconut trees during rainy season. Hence it is common in that season that dry coconuts fall over the river, stream, etc. During the flood, these coconuts float over the river and we could see many people trying to capture them using many tricks.

Some people living near the river lead their life by capturing these coconuts that float over the river. Most of them know swimming. They keep everything ready to capture the things that float on the river like coconut, areca nut, wood log, etc. Some people capture these things as they know swimming and few more people make temporary shed and capture these things by using nets or ‘Kalli” (Tulu name) which is used for plucking mangoes.

Are these activities seen in your place too? Let us go to the sub-river Seraje that flows over the border of Karnataka-Kerala via Manila village and see how people are capturing the coconuts.

Seraje people feel very happy during rainy season. If they have heavy rain, their joy finds no bound. The reason is coconut!

Some farmers of this place capture coconuts by standing on the bamboo platform constructed nearby the river or by throwing ‘Kalli’ or net and some people swim in the river and reach the shore after capturing these things. Damu from Seraje is doing this business with his team during rainy season and you can’t believe that this team capture more than 10000 coconuts in a period of 3 months during rainy season. The team members share the amount they get by selling them. As they don’t have coconut farms on their own, when they go to the market with these coconuts, some people watch them with surprise.

This is a profession where one can lose his life also. It needs courage. Though it seems to be very easy for others, their act of swimming against the flood for their livelihood is really adventurous.